In recent years, there has been an increase in the popularity of card-type storage media (hereinafter referred to simply as “media”) employing flash memory or the like. There are many variations of this media, including CompactFlash (registered trademark; hereinafter also abbreviated as “CF”), SmartMedia (registered trademark; hereinafter also abbreviated as “SM”), Memory Stick (registered trademark; hereinafter also abbreviated as “MS”), Secure Digital Cards (registered trademark; hereinafter also abbreviated as “SD”), Microdrives (registered trademark), MultiMediaCards (registered trademark), xD-Picture Cards (registered trademark), Memory Stick Duo, and miniSD Cards (registered trademark). This type of media has such advantages as not requiring a drive system and, therefore, have been used primarily in digital cameras, notebook PCs, and cell phones for which low power consumption and portability are high priorities.
There are also a number of memory card readers/writers well known in the art, which are peripheral devices that enable a user to access this media from a personal computer or the like for data reading and writing. The types of memory card readers/writers include a single-slot reader/writer equipped with one slot for inserting media, a multi-slot reader/writer provided with a plurality of slots so that data can be accessed from a plurality of media types, and a reader/writer with internal flash memory in addition to the card slots.